Family -- Juvenile fiction; Sisters -- Juvenile fiction
"They're very fashionable for bedrooms," Rosemary assured her. "We
have some at Rainbow Hill--I can show you those. And Mother has a
magazine with heaps of pictures in that show checked casement curtains.
You'll love them when you see them made and hung, Louisa."
"Well--the children can wait for the dresses, I suppose," said Louisa.
And, with Rosemary's help, the curtains were made and hung before the
circus agent's wife paid her promised visit. They were a great success
and Louisa was inordinately proud of them.
Now they went back to the kitchen to look again at the gingham.
"I wish there was some way I could earn a little money," said Louisa
wistfully.
The knitted face cloth on the back of the kitchen chair was responsible
for Rosemary's idea.
"You could knit a bedspread, Louisa!" she said with enthusiasm. "I'll
show you how; Miss Clinton told me they sell for lots of money and
Warren has a cousin who is a domestic science teacher in a large city;
he said she was out here last summer and offered to get orders for Miss
Clinton, but she wouldn't agree to sell her spreads. She doesn't need
the money, but you do."
Louisa was as excited as Rosemary and before an hour had passed the two
girls had, in imagination, knit four elaborate spreads and disposed of
them for eighty dollars apiece.
Then Louisa came down to earth and spoke more practically.
"It will take a long time to do a full-sized spread," she said, "but I
will have plenty of time to knit this winter. You show me how and Miss
Clinton will help me, if I get stuck in the middle of a pattern. You
are too lovely, Rosemary, to think of something I can do!"
"I wish I could earn some money for the Gays," sighed Shirley, trotting
home beside Rosemary when they had left the cheerful Louisa.
"Well, you're a pretty little girl to earn money, darling," Rosemary
told her, "but I'll try to think of something you can do. We'll ask
the boys; they know more about money than we do, Warren and Rich
especially."
Her intuition proved to be right, for Warren, consulted, suggested that
Shirley might pick herbs, wild ones, and get the Gay children to help
her.
"Old Fiddlestrings buys wild herbs and sells them, along with those he
raises in his garden, to city druggists," explained Warren. "I'll see
him to-night and find out what he wants right now. Then I'll help you
till you learn to know the different leaves and after that it will be
easy."
Warren was as good as his word and in a few days Shirley and Jim,
Kenneth and Kitty Gay were earnestly hunting herbs. They made a few
mistakes at first, but soon learned and as it was wholesome work and
did not take them off the farm, they were encouraged to go herb picking
every day. Warren acted as selling agent and the little heap of
pennies and dimes and nickels in the pink china bank grew steadily.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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